As someone who visits China almost every year, and has spent quite a lot of time there including for study please consider what I'm going to say not as a criticism, but an attempt to help you understand how your words will likely be received.

You haven't clarified any facts, you've just made two statements of opinion without any supporting evidence or greater explanation.

As someone who lived in china for 9 years, and married a Chinese woman, perhaps you could recognize that you might live in a very specific bubble in a culture very different from China, and that the perspective is so different that reaching out and trying to understand this person's world view might be more productive than tritely dismissing the comment on technicalities.

I hate China's government and the way they operate but I also recognize that the world is very complex and cultures are ancient and have very different but also successful mechanisms of operation. On the same note I would not write off an American's perspective because the president is a wack job.

I would write off someone posting about any country if their entire statement could be boiled down to "X is reporting it wrong" without any evidence or examples...

It just so happens that this kind of statement is common in the Chinese people that I speak with.

You can make a very good case that Western media is terrible in its China reporting, but a blunt statement like that isn't going to be received well in a community like HN that likes to think of itself as critical.

As I said, I was trying to help them understand how their statement was likely to be received not "tritely dismissing the comment on technicalities." which is an interpretation entirely of your own that wasn't contained in my original post.

Most posts on HN are statements or opinion not backed up by facts. Occasionally an academic type will provide footnotes to their post but it's not the norm. Typically if someone's post is not received well, people respond by asking for references or a challenge to back up their statement.

You take a comment that is not really qualitatively different from any other post on HN and give it special status because it's posted by a Chinese national.

I think the difference is that on many issues, people on HN agree on the basic assumptions and skip the 'sources plz' part. In part because many of us are from the same country or similar cultures.

That in itself is not necessarily a good thing; more than once I've seen it lead to fruitless discussion because it turns out those involved actually did not agree on those assumptions.

But on the other hand it's sometimes necessary. We can't have a discussion, practically speaking, where we define every term we use journal-article-style, or provide references for every single assumption.

My point is that it strikes me as perfectly reasonable that when 'we' are confronted with a perspective that is very different from our own, some more effort should be put into providing arguments (and/or definitions).

Not to mention that on the whole I'd say HN already demands elaboration even from those who have a relatively-similar perspective or background, and I think more of that wouldn't hurt.

I do understand how it can seem unfair, but I don't think it's unreasonable.

The original comment contributed nothing of substance: "China's political environment is indeed bad, but most of the Western media coverage distorted the facts"

You're the one asking others to give this empty argument special status because it was posted by someone who claims to be Chinese.

How is that insubstantial? Many do not realize that the west is also a purveyor of lots of propaganda and perhaps they should challenge what they hear from the western media about controversial China topics. That is a very valid point.

It would be substantial (that is, having substance) if the grandfather post perhaps included an example of how the western media screws up its China coverage. I have no doubt there are a lot to choose from.

"Oh the coverage is all wrong" is a pretty empty statement by itself.

So ask for an example to back it up rather than write the person off. Like I said, most posts here on HN are not backed up by references until they are asked for.

The President of the United States goes around saying CNN is "fake news", and you're trying to tell me that nobody challenges the Western news media.

As someone who also lived in China for 9 years and married a Chinese woman...well...really that doesn't make me an expert on anything.

But grandparent's post genuinely just presented two opinions without elaboration. It could have come from a westerner and it would downvoted, because it just isn't a high quality comment (though definitely not an offensive one either).

It's fine to disagree with his political views. That's precisely his point: the freedom to disagree is the foundation of a free society.

What facts were distorted? That he was jailed, multiple times, for defending freedom of expression? That he died in custody? That his wife Liu Xia was under house arrest for years without charges? Or was it his role during the Tiananmen protests and subsequent massacre? That he negotiated the free passage of students from Tiananmen, saving many from the advancing tanks?

There are certain views that should never ever be publicly stated, e.g. Liu said China needs to be colonized for 300 years to get better, is it just free of speech? sound quite repressive to me.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/15/nobel-...

> There is certain views that should never ever be publicly stated

Who gets to decide what is or is not allowed to be spoken?

> Liu said China needs to be colonized for 300 years to get better, is it just free of speech? sound quite repressive to me.

Even if it is repressive, preventing him to say it by arresting him and his family is not repressive to you?

>Who gets to decide what is or is not allowed to be spoken?

In America we have helpful groups like Southern Poverty Law Center which direct us to which ideas are bad speech that shouldn't be allowed. Maybe China should follow our example and privatize their speech curatorship police, then they would be more free.

You are free to disregard the southern poverty law center if you'd like, and the last time I checked, they can't throw you in jail.

> Who gets to decide what is or is not allowed to be spoken?

You can spend your entire life arguing whether it is good or bad for China to be colonized by the west for 300 years, I am not going to waste my time on that.

And by your words no one else is allowed to either? Why?

Sure, it might be a stupid argument, why is it banned again?

Oh, you just don't like it.

> Even if it is repressive, preventing him to say it by arresting him and his family is not repressive to you?

Are you sure he was arrest because of saying that? Do you have any facts to support your view?

> Liu said China needs to be colonized for 300 years to get better, is it just free of speech? sound quite repressive to me.

Do you think Liu deserves Nobel Peace Prize after saying that publicly?

Remember that the argument was "There is certain views that should never ever be publicly stated".

> Do you think Liu deserves Nobel Peace Prize after saying that publicly?

I don't care one way or the other, it's the Nobel committee's decision who they award the prize to. It makes no difference to me. It doesn't make what he, or any other Nobel Laureate say any more true or worthy of consideration.

> Remember that the argument was "There is certain views that should never ever be publicly stated".

There was no argument, it was a statement. If you want to argue in favor of why some views should never be publicly stated and who is gonna decide what is/is not allowed, go ahead.

> I don't care one way or the other, it's the Nobel committee's decision who they award the prize to. It makes no difference to me. It doesn't make what he, or any other Nobel Laureate say any more true or worthy of consideration.

Yea. That is what I want to learn. You do not care about the Prize.

> If you want to argue in favor of why some views should never be publicly stated and who is gonna decide what is/is not allowed, go ahead.

It seems that is you want to know about it. Probably I misunderstood you. I have no interest :P. So we can stop here.

you came to this thread largely because Liu is not a random dude on street, he had the nobel peace prize. if you want to argue "I don't care", you need to back yourself up better.

the core issue here is simple: how come such a man who repeatedly made such extremist styles comments in public got awarded the nobel peace prize.

> the core issue here is simple: how come such a man who repeatedly made such extremist styles comments in public got awarded the nobel peace prize.

That is your issue, not mine.

> you came to this thread largely because Liu is not a random dude on street, he had the nobel peace prize.

I am here because of the outrageous comment you made about ‘certain views that should never ever be publicly stated’. If you can’t defend your opinions then why are you here? Can you, or can you not explain how do you support your extremist views?

what? saying "certain views should never ever be publicly stated" is outrageous?

what a joke.

It absolutely is outrageous. You cannot put any limits on free speech in a free society. The people should monitor their own behavior, not the state.

> You cannot put any limits on free speech in a free society

But that doesn't exist anywhere in the world. The closest is the US, but even their extremist version of freedom of speech has government imposed limits.

Well right, we strive to do the best we can. Threat of harm is obviously limited due to the implication of action. I was more referring to the exchange of ideas between people, which should never be restricted.

You can't defend your position. That's what I thought.

A joke indeed.

I said "certain views should never ever be publicly stated", and suddenly I need to defend such position?

If you live in a society that allows you to publicly state anything without consequences, I'd say that is horrible.

If you live in the US, try talk about some racial stuff and bring in the same colonization elements in, see how that is going to end.

Time to grow up talk like an adult.

I think the consequences should be decided by the people, rather than an what must be a very insecure central power

Right. And you still know something is not acceptable by the people, and you probably wont go across that line. Same thing in China. Many of Liu's opinions are hated by Chinese people in general, not by the central power.

That is the exact consequence Liu got - he is never respected by the Chinese people in general. Why Chinese people should respect someone who openly suggested that they should be colonized by the west for 300 years?

For his sentence, no one in this thread ever supported that, for me, it is as bad as giving this man the nobel peace prize.

> I said "certain views should never ever be publicly stated", and suddenly I need to defend such position?

Yes. You must defend every word you say.

> Time to grow up talk like an adult.

You mean like an adult who can't defend his/her positions and is willing to send to jail everyone who disagrees with him/her? What a wonderful "adult" you must be.

。

I’d argue that they are not being disagreed with because of what is “socially acceptable”, but because their comment added no additional facts or information, and was instead just a couple of opinions without much to inform them.

This user was downvoted for his views which are the rough equivalent of "she was asking for it".

To see this as people simply being closed-minded to different cultures is really myopic.

I personally refuse to hold people to different moral standards because they come from another country.